This scholarly catalogue provides an engaging analysis of Chagall’s life and career in the early decades of the twentieth century. Featured throughout are the paintings and works on paper that the artist created during these years, as well as those by his Russian and Parisian colleagues, including Léon Bakst and Robert Delaunay. The catalogue also serves as a handbook to the many great early masterpieces by Chagall in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which encompasses nearly 30 of the artist’s important paintings, drawings, and prints from before 1925.

By Michael R. Taylor, Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.